Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Page 341

I start my day facing page 341 of the manuscript I started last week. I have many, many pages that I've had to toss. Usually, I cut them out and set them in another file--just in case I change my mind. But I've actually moved that file to the trash.

I'm trying to pull all my little loose ends together. Aye-yi-yi. If you've read my stuff, you know that some of it is so thick in the threads...

I love a story that makes me think, how on earth will all this come together and work out okay? Because a story like that leaves you hanging with true amazement to the end.

I mean, hey, it's a romance--the main guy and the main girl better end up together. Even if it is only happy for now (versus happy ever after). But how can you solve all their problems without it feeling contrived?

Contrived meaning...you look at the page and say, well, isn't that convenient...and stupid. Life isn't that friggin' easy. All the stars don't usually line up--unless, of course, they're lining up against you.

Which is what is going on in my g-rated romance. (I know! What am I thinking to try and go back to my pre-sex days?!? And who will buy this book??) Too late to worry about it now. I just have to finish this monster ASAP.

Anyhow, the girl loses her apartment, and her job in one day, finds out her best friend and her boss have been having a relationship for months--and she hasn't known about it, and this guy that comes into her life, that she's swooning over...turns out to be a real estate mogul who bought the building/business she works for and is responsible for her losing her job.

Thinking she can go home to her parent's farm, she finds out they're going to sell their farm, get this, to him...for a multi-complex. Now, this guy...his life is amazing and awful all at the same time. He meets this girl he can't get out of his head--and he's running into her everywhere, and ends up giving her rides home...on the same weekend that his "hostile" take-over is put into play, and his mother announces she's dying of cancer.

The only thing she wants is to see him married and with child before she dies. So, there's some pressure. Smart man with money that he is, he decides to ask an actress to sign a pre-nup and do it for the cash. Only, the one actress he knows turns out to be barren. As it turns out, this other girl, the one that is everywhere, is an actress--not a great one. Extra/Understudy type.

Except she gets wind of the paperwork he faxed to the other actress--and tirades at him for how men SHOULD propose, and how ludicrous it is for him to think that anyone would marry him like that.

Of course, when her world falls apart, that whole thing starts looking doable.

He bangs his head on the wall (metaphorically) on every turn. She is one of his displaced workers? Her father's the one that's been giving his people hell on the sell? The proposal to his daughter turns out looking like he's just trying to get the property any way possible. And all he wants to do is make his mom happy, and damn if he doesn't find himself really in love with the girl with all the moral principles.

Oh, yeah. And there's at least three guys that he thinks she may be sleeping with--which doesn't jive with her "you don't do it that way" attitude, but still--he comes to understand what being jealous really means.

Anyhow, that's my twisty little pile of plots. (Okay, there's one more big twist at the end.) And that's where I am.

Can I finish it today? I have my daughter's spinal check appointment at 9 a.m., a two hour trip to the bank in another town, a writer's meeting this evening, and a trip to KC before midnight. I have to have same daughter on a plane around 6 a.m.--which means being at the airport by 5.

And yesterday, I did nothing but sit around and read this ms and type. I ate two bananas and a steak. Oh, yeah, and a boatload of muscle relaxers.